I Could Be There For You - Eisley

A demonstration that even on a record with high production levels and a bit of a pop sheen there’s still plenty of room for a talented band to surprise you. It's shadowy, vaguely ominous - a reminder that light may shimmer on the surface of a lake, but underneath the water is a long, deep darkness.

But for all that, the chorus is absolutely gorgeous, and they hit their perfect pitch with a bridge that bursts and swirls like fireworks in a still night sky. Now, I’m not trying to say Eisley is quite at their level, but this song, at least, would feel right at home on your Delgados record of choice.

Jarhand - Immaculate Machine
Dear Confessor - Immaculate Machine

I wrote yesterday about the new record from the New Pornographers, commenting that "if it was some band I had never heard of, I would probably praise it as a fine new entry in the genre of 'New Pornographers-esque' indie rock."

Today I wanted to bring up yet another band with a solid 2007 release who play some solid punk-infused pop with just enough of a hardcore edge to keep you on your toes. The band is called The Flatliners and the record is called The Great Awake. It's about what you'd expect from a solid Fat Wreck Chords release - it may not set the world on fire, but it will give you some catchy punk tunes.

I'd like to continue a trend I started last month of posting on great songs that are so good that they overwhelm my ingrained concern about over-produced pop-punk. Today's band is called The Starting Line.

Island

This song is serious Warped Tour fare, but in the very best way. Infectious, a bit of bombast, and a guitar line that would make the toughest Jimmy Eat World fan (yeah, yeah, a contradiction in terms...) swoon.

It's the sort of song to make you wonder whether all those other stuff they did before might not have had a little more substance than you ever thought. I mean, if they can write a song like this, surely there must have been something more significant going on with their earlier emo-to-a-fault tracks, right?

Yesterday I mentioned Labrador - without a doubt one of my favorite record labels in the world. Today, I want to hype up another Labrador band, probably my favorite in fact: Club 8. I raved about "Whatever You Want," the opening single from their new record back in May.

I've been looking forward to a sophomore release from Headlights for almost two years. From the first time I heard "TV" a couple summers ago, I've expected great things from them. And while nothing else on their debut effort quite lived up to that first song, it nevertheless ended up as my #10 album of 2006.

One album that came close to making my 2007 list but didn't quite have the oomph is Riot! - the sophomore record from pop-punkers Paramore.

Today's post is the 400th here at Heartache With Hard Work. I never would have guessed when I started all this two years ago that I would still be going strong now. But it's been a lot of fun, and it's really gratifying that so many people have stopped by to read what I've got to say.

I rant and rave about how much I love all the fantastic indie-pop music coming out of Sweden, but set all that aside. Yes Sambassadeur are from Sweden, yes they're on Labrador, and yes they make pop songs so sweet you could get a mouth full of cavities just listening to them (remember Kate? God I love that song).

Asking for Flowers - Kathleen Edwards

I find myself incapable of writing about Kathleen Edwards without falling back into easy cliches. But sometimes lazy writing is still sufficient to fully convey what's here, and I think this is one of those cases. Her new record Asking For Flowers sounds like all the really nice, mellow stuff from a Whiskeytown record, with lonely steel guitars, harmonicas, and a voice which gives everything you might expect from a good Lucina Williams song: the appropriate flashes of dusty roads and lonely nights, the requisite gritty tales of broken hearts and faded memories, a yearning for something left unstated.

So I've been going through some good but slightly underwhelming releases from bands who have released some of my favorite records of the decade. I've covered the #1's from 07 and 06, but since we're still waiting on Sufjan to bring us a new state, I can't cover the #1 from 2005. But I can do almost the next best thing and talk about the new record from British Sea Power whose Open Season was my #5 record of that year.

One of my favorite (re)discoveries of last year was David Ford, who I had enjoyed as the lead man from Easyworld a few years back and who re-emerged from the woodwork with a very fine folk-driven record (including the absolutely fantastic "State of the Union" - which was my #3 song from last year).

I'm sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my connecting flight to head back to my old Washington home for Christmas. And I can say that I'm not a big fan of the Las Vegas airport, any more than I am of Las Vegas the tourist trap. In the entire terminal I'm stuck in I couldn't find any food that looked even remotely appetizing, and neither could I find a single place selling Sprite. Now, I'm not even a huge fan of Sprite but I developed a big of a craving after I realized how completely they had eradicated it from their airport.

There's something incredibly comforting about a good lo-fi song. It feels organic and close in a way that even the very best studio-produced music never can. It's hard to do well, which is why final versions usually sound better than demos and why words like "rough" or "distant" don't usually inspire people to listen.

But that's part of the charm - that the line between some folks in a bedroom with a laptop and that transcendental moment of unshorn perfection.

I'm not entirely sure why, but the new record from the unheralded king of folk-rock Josh Ritter is vaguely disappointing. The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter is by no means a bad album - it's probably one of the 15 or 20 best records of the whole year - it's just that for the most part it inspires respect more than love. I appreciate the artistry, the tone, and the lyrical allusions but they rarely burrow deep.

The theme this week is my favorite records of the year. My last review was of the follow-up to my favorite record of 2007, so I figured today was a good time to tackle the sophomore release from The Submarines, whose debut record was my favorite of 2006.

If Declare a New State was about redemption, Honeysuckle Weeks is about the time afterwards when the more mundane issues seep back into your life. There are plenty of moments of sheer wonder, but those are infused with a widespread sense of easy comfort.

Continuing on the theme of music from 2007 that rocked, but which I never found the time or space to write about: today's entry is Holy Roman Empire, who bear a striking resemblance to Paramore, who I talked about last week. These folks focus a little bit more on the punk and a little less on the pop, but it's based on the same general premise that there are few things more enticing than female vocals on top of crunchy guitars playing catchy melodies.

I'm moving to Santa Cruz next year to start my Ph.D., so in honor of the area I thought today would be a perfect day to discuss an artist from that area I've been meaning to cover for months now. Reed KD is a Northern California native, whose been around for quite a while, but only came to my attention with the release of his new record The Ashes Bloom.

It's another entry in the long tradition of acoustic folk-pop, but one of the stronger ones I've heard in a while. In particular, it really reminds me of that great Old Canes record from a few years that I absolutely adored. Acoustic instruments, a harmonica, blending together to make a romping tune for a backyard on a summer evening.

I don't normally have much interest in regurgitating press material, but sometimes it's a band I love and a turn of phrase that so perfectly captures every reason why I love them, and I just can't help myself. So here's how the new Tullycraft record was described in a recent e-mail:

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I've been in Lexington, Kentucky for the last week getting nowhere close to enough sleep and working a little too hard, but I'm finally back home with a little bit of free time. I used about 12 hours of that to sleep, waking up at the nice early hour of 2:30 PM.

I've got an ever-increasingly backlog of things I want to write about here, so hopefully I should be able to post pretty regularly for the rest of the month.

I really ought to have posted about today's band a few months ago, when it was still a dance between the hot end-of-summer days and the cool autumn evenings. As it stands, the chill of late November and the dirty remnants of the year's first snow hardly seem a fair accompaniment to one of the freshest records of the year.

The Rat - The Walkmen

Digging back through the vaults a little bit for this one. I never mustered all that much enthusiasm for anything else from The Walkmen, but this song is absolutely stunning. It opens with a blistering guitar that's joined by some drumming that would make Animal from the Muppets swell with jealousy. This is drumming that could singlehandedly violate the CTBT.

I've got no time for the next few days to post, so I thought it would be a good idea to kick in the way-back machine and (re)mention an old favorite that most of you have probably never heard. The band is Super Deluxe, they were briefly big in the Northwest in the mid-90s, and for the brief period they were around they were possibly my favorite band on the planet.

Music is all about types, isn't it? The more I write about it, the harder it is to avoid dropping a "sounds like..." - something which is especially hard to do given the number of bands I really enjoy these days who all play variations on the same power-pop-meets-New Wave theme.

Once again, it's the time of year when I've got way too much else going on to justify spending much time writing about music. So instead of doing some of the full reviews I keep promising to get around to, I'm going to put those in a holding pattern of indefinite length and try something else. For the next couple weeks, it'll be a new song every day (or at least every day I get around to posting).

But not just "new" in the sense of being current - it will literally be a song that I had never heard until that day. Usually I give myself at least a couple weeks with something to let my opinions settle a bit. But the result is that I spend a *lot* of time trying to come up with a perfect way of describing my reaction.

A Small Good Thing - Into Flight

This track is one of the nicer pieces of ambient rock I've heard in quite a while. You've got all the usual elements: quiet intro, swirling guitars, a wordless chorus, and layers upon layers of churning sound. And, most importantly, it bucks the trend of a lot of music that touches in these genres in that these guys sound like they are having fun. Too often shoegaze acts take the name a bit more literally than they ought to, resulting in music that leaves you feeling listless where it tries to make you soar.

Not here. This is a smiling face lifted to the stars, a voice ringing out through the wide expanse, guitars that each strive to out-do the others. And more concretely, it turns out to be exactly what its name promises: a small good thing that reminds you of the joy in being alive.

Palomar are not interested in genre-bending. Indeed, their focus is exactly the opposite – an attempt to dig deeply into basic themes and reveal them in all their glory. It's surprisingly refreshing, actually.

In the Night - Basia Bulat

Basia Bulat's record came out last year, but I never really got around to giving it a listen until recently. It turns out to be one of the most comfortable, warm, and hummable records in a while. I'm a sucker for this sort of backyard strumming sound (particularly when ukuleles are incorporated), but she has a voice that makes this something a little more special. It's breathy, sultry, and just a little bit dusty.